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Why AroAce Jughead Is Important: A Fourth Update.

You’re probably thinking something like Lauren didn’t you just post the third update like a couple of days ago? Or something like that right? Well I know I recently just done update three but there’s been photos floating around Twitter of either the new episode that has just aired or the new episodes coming and I literally am so angry that I need to vent it out.

I first want to talk about the Jughead kiss picture that has surfaced and the other one where Jughead is extremely close to the same girl (I think it’s Betty, I’m not 100% sure I’m not an expert on the show characters and who is playing who because I don’t watch it). I want to explain why this infuriates me so much. Jughead is a character within the comics who has repeatedly said how much he doesn’t like kissing, how uncomfortable he is with people touching him, hugging him etc. They are throwing this character out of his canon boundaries, they’re throwing our aroace character back in our faces and showing us that this is the “right” way a character should be. Riverdale was supposed to show the aro and ace communities that we are perfect the way we are, that we don’t need fixing and that it doesn’t matter that we are aroace and we don’t fit the “norms” of society.

Jughead in the comics would never stand for this, this would make him so uncomfortable. It makes me so uncomfortable. I don’t know how many times I can say this but Riverdale is telling me that I need to be fixed, that I need to conform with this world that thinks sex and romance is so important, which makes me uncomfortable. Why are people allowing this to happen? Why aren’t more people outraged by this?

The second thing I would like to talk about is the Riverdale fandom and how they are so accepting of this erasure and heck even shipping people with Jughead. I need allos to walk in our shoes for a moment. The world is telling you that to be human you need to have a relationship and sex, you need to experience romantic love. Now imagine if you find out that you don’t experience both romantic and sexual attraction. You realise that the world won’t see you as a human being, that you’re this broken being, and so that the world feels sorry for you being this way. Now imagine finding this character, such an iconic character that is exactly like you, that is touch adverse, aromantic, and asexual. Imagine how freeing it is to understand that this character is just like you and that’s okay. That you aren’t broken. Now imagine you get an adaption of the source material of that character, you’re so excited to finally see a character like you on TV and they decide to do a full 180 of his character. Suddenly that character is no longer the character you once knew, the character that helped you understand and love yourself for being aroace. NOW understand how damaging that is to the aro and ace communities who have just begun to love and accept themselves, or to aros and aces who are just discovering who they are. Understand how we’re seeing this character, who is just like us, being ripped from us, changed, thrown into this amanormative world that favours, applauds you, for sex and romantic love. Imagine seeing the ONLY character like you be conformed to society’s “rules” because it’s what will make the character “human”. I want you to understand how damaging this change is to us. How even shipping this character with people is damaging to us.

By shipping Jughead with another character you, not only Riverdale, is telling us to conform to this. Telling us that we need sex and romance to live. When in reality we don’t. I love being aroace. I’ve accepted myself as aroace. But this is breaking it all down, this is making me start to question myself, the world. And that’s not okay. You’re telling aroaces that it’s okay to feel broken, that we need to accept this change and move on. When we don’t, we should be trying to stop this, we should stand up for our representation. We shouldn’t back down.

Jughead was our only representation, and taking it away from us was the worst thing to do. We won’t stop fighting for our representation. No matter what. #AroAceJugheadOrBust is here to stay.